The leaders of Iran have declared many times that they wish to obliterate Israel. Why should Israel not believe this threat? More to the point, why should Israel stay its military response and instead put its trust in the capacity of the bureaucrats in “the international community” to shuffle papers?

“Northern Syria is awash with advanced antitank and antiaircraft weapons. The situation has changed very quickly,” said a Syrian involved in weapons procurement. Most of the shoulder-fired missiles have come from Libya, smuggled into the country through the Turkish border, several rebel coordinators said. Others have been supplied by militant Palestinian factions now supporting the Syrian uprising.

• A lot of online buzz about this video of a Syrian helicopter shot down over Idlib. Backstory at the Daily Telegraph.

• Bashar Assad’s losing support of his own Alawite ethnic group. The Washington Post writes:

“But it’s clear there’s a dynamic in Qardaha that is not in favor of Assad. There’s just so many tensions.”

Indeed, assumptions of Alawite loyalty to the regime mask a far more complex reality in which traditional clan rivalries are becoming tangled in deep frustrations among the many members of the community who have misgivings about the direction in which Assad is leading them, according to Alawite residents of the coastal region and exiled activists.

Rest O’ the Roundup

• The Guardian denied a media report that it plans to cease publishing a print edition and go digital only. Robert Andrews of paidContent asks the obvious question: Who do you believe?

• On a related note, The Daily Beast/Newsweek announced — to little surprise — that it is going web only. The last print edition of the US edition will be Dec. 31.Editor in chief Tina Brown writes:

Read today’s The Guardian column by Jonathan Freedland in which he berates the way in which Israel is berated for killing Arabs but when Arabs kill Arabs nobody fusses.
Incidentally despite the Anglicised spelling the name means Peaceland as in that 17th century rascal Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland und Mecklenburg.

Syria & Weapons: So where are Syrian rebels getting weapons from? Just wait and see — upon investigation, this will become another “Oliver North/Nicaragua Weapons” story! The U.S. “foreign policy machine” [never mind who is at the helm of that ship] has always meddled in the affairs of other nations totally focused on “what is in the best interests of U.S. national security”.

Syria & Turkey: Why isn’t the global community having a “hissy-fit” about Turkey’s Acts of War against Syria? Why aren’t the Russians raising holy hell about their passengers & cargo on the Syrian airliner being taken down into Turkey while flying over turkish airspace? Isn’t this against “international law”?